Union Thuggery

In France, private sector unions are still strong and the law makes it difficult to fire or lay off employees. (Which, of course, also depresses hiring.) Air France has lost money for the last few years and has been trying to downsize; it recently announced that pilots, flight attendants and ground crews would be be laid off unless unions agreed to productivity improvements. That led to a demonstration outside a »

Captured on video: Steven Crowder is assaulted by union thugs in Michigan. It will be interesting to see whether these goons are criminally prosecuted: Earlier today, a Democratic legislator in Michigan promised that there would be “blood” if workers aren’t forced to join unions (and thereby pay involuntary tribute to the Democratic Party) against their will. At this point, it is difficult to see any justification for the continued existence »

I occasionally click through to Willie Brown’s rambling column in the San Francisco Chronicle–he’s obviously trying to channel or emulate the format of the legendary Herb Caen–in large part because I always regarded Brown as the smartest and most able politician in America during his heyday as Speaker of the California State Assembly. He flummoxed Republicans at every turn (and several ethics investigations, too, if you believe the rumors). Today »

I am not a big fan of teachers’ unions. In most cities, they are the primary obstacle to controlling budgets and improving education. But sometimes they are even worse than that. Local 59 is the City of Minneapolis’s unit of the Minnesota Federation of Teachers. Minneapolis public school teachers have their work cut out for them: many of the city’s schools are poor. How much the union is to blame »

The climax of Theodore Roosevelt’s nomination acceptance speech at the Progressive Party convention of 1912 was his declaration that “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.” How ironic therefore that Armageddon for the supposedly “Progressive” forces of organized labor should be occurring in the Progressive promised land of Wisconsin next week. The Wall Street Journal this morning reports the grim tidings for public sector unions in the »

The Hill reports that unions and other liberal groups are vowing to make life miserable for any companies that contribute to Republican campaigns this year: Liberal interest groups, watchdogs and unions on Monday threatened to boycott, protest and publicly embarrass corporations that spend money trying to sway the outcome of the November election. Gathered Monday at the Washington headquarters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the groups issued a »

I’m not going to make it to CPAC this year; too busy in the office. This headline, though, really makes me wish I could attend: “Big labor plans ‘Occupy CPAC.'” That’s right–union goons are going to try to interfere with the conservative gathering. The D.C. AFL-CIO sent a call out to its members: What do Wisconsin Governor SCOTT WALKER, presidential candidates MITT ROMNEY, NEWT GINGRICH, RICK SANTORUM and House Budget »

One of the odder political phenomena of the moment is the “Occupy Wall Street” campaign, which began in New York and now has spread to several other cities. The Wall Street demonstrators look like the same bedraggled good-for-nothings that we have seen many times before, at G-20 meetings and the like. But the Democrats, somewhat to my surprise, seem to be embracing the protests, even as they turn increasingly violent. »

I had no idea that people who work for unions have unions of their own, until this piece by Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection appeared. Prof. Jacobson documents the disaster that has befallen Wisconsin’s public sector unions in the wake of the popular revolt against their excessive power: If you want a good measure of how deeply the collective bargaining bill in Wisconsin has disrupted public sector unions, there is »

Unions have traditionally been relatively popular with Americans, but that is changing rapidly. And virtually no one approves of the bullying tactics that are generally associated with unions. So Mitt Romney is doing a smart thing, I think–not to mention a good thing–in taking on the unions, and tying them to President Obama. His campaign released this video yesterday, as part of its Obama Isn’t Working theme: »

We linked yesterday to Dana Loesch’s post on a violent attack by union longshoremen in Washington: Earlier this morning 500 or so members of the AFL-CIO stormed a port in Washington, vandalized the facility, reportedly cut the brake lines of train cars, and held six guards hostage. Shockingly, no one was arrested. Earlier that week a judge issued a restraining order against this same group after they clashed with police »

Our friend Andrew Breitbart has an op-ed in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Andrew traces the downfall of the Obama administration to the events of August 2009, when the American people rose up against Obamacare, and the administration and its allies responded with thuggery. An excerpt: When the history of Barack Obama’s one-term presidency is written, August 2009 will be remembered as the turning point. It was then that thousands of »